views and thoughts on topics, especially ones pertaining to christianity – with an emphasis on how most christians either ignore or discriminate against unmarried christians – and how christians have turned marriage and parenting into IDOLS and how there is no true support for sexual purity, virginity, or celibacy among christians – this is a blog for me to vent; I seldom permit dissenting views. I don't debate dissenters ————-

Category: celibate

Women Being Slut Shamed, Virgin Shamed, or Celibate Shamed at The Doctor’s Office

So, I saw a headline go through my Twitter feed a few weeks ago about a woman who says while on a trip to the doctor’s office to get a check up, she was “slut shamed” by a nurse practitioner at that appointment. (The link to that is towards the bottom of this post.)

I don’t doubt her experience, but I chipped in under that Tweet or another related to mention that as a chaste woman – I’m over 45 and still a virgin myself – I had the same exact thing happen to me, but in the reverse, when I was in my mid or late 20s and had to see a doctor to get blood tests done (over a non-sexual related medical issue).

The doctor I saw at my appointment sort of “Virgin-Shamed” me at that time.

We’re all the time hearing about “Slut Shaming” in our culture, but there is far more Celibacy- and Virgin- Shaming taking place than Slut Shaming.

However, I don’t very often see feminists discussing Virgin-Shaming nearly as much.

As a matter of fact, some feminists who are always complaining about “slut shaming” participate in Celibate-Shaming, or Virgin-Shaming (and sadly, other conservatives also participate in virgin shaming or celibate shaming as well, though many conservatives CLAIM to respect sexual abstinence – but they really do not).

The lady doctor I saw when I was in my mid to late 20s said in addition to running the tests I was in to see her for that day (and I don’t recall now what they were, only that the tests were not related to anything of a sexual nature), she also wanted to run sexually transmitted disease tests on my blood samples to make sure I did not have any sexually transmitted diseases.

I laughed and told her that would be a waste of her time and the lab’s time, as I was still a virgin.

Letter to Advice Columnist: ‘I’m A Virgin Age 55 and I Worry My Life is Wasted’

I’m less perturbed by this guy’s homosexual orientation and more by his ageism. What is it with older men (LGBT or hetero) who insist on only boinking or dating and marrying much younger people?

And by the way: it’s a sad, sad misunderstanding and misconception by a lot of people that all people (or most) who are virgins or never-married by the age of 30 or 40 are all LGBT. That is not true! I too am a never married adult, am still a virgin, yet I am a hetero. I am NOT LGBT.

Inside Secret World of Incels Who Turn To Murder Because They’ve Never Had Sex by J. Lavender

Ah, male entitlement. I’m a celibate, hetero woman who had hoped to marry (and hence be having sex with a husband), I’m still single and celibate over age of 45, but I don’t run around killing men because of it.

I do not believe men owe me sex or marriage. Too bad our culture largely sends a message to boys and men in movies, magazine ads, and so on, that they are all deserving and owed marriage, sex, or dates.

Rejection is a part of life, whether we’re talking about not getting what we want romance-wise (no marriage, no dates, no sex, etc), or in other areas. You can go out on a lot of job interviews and be rejected by employer after employer.

Notice that in some of these cases, men are also harmed by incels: incels don’t always just target women, they also kill men in their rampages.

It’s something that happened when I began to focus on myself and stopped looking for a Netflix-and-chill buddy.

It happened gradually and I only thought about it every so often ― when couples held on to each other scurrying across a windy parking lot, or when love scenes got a little too vivid during a Friday night movie.

Mostly, though, sex just never occurred to me as something I was missing in my life.

The number of U.S. adults not having sex has reached a record high, according to a (Link): Washington Post analysis of data from the General Social Survey.

Twenty-three percent of respondents, or nearly 1 in 4, reported having no sex in the past year, according to the Post. More than 30 percent of adults reported having monthly sex and nearly 40 percent reported having sex weekly or more.

Young men between 18 and 30 years of age saw one of the biggest declines in sexual activity, with 28 percent saying they had no sex over the last year. The same data from 1989 shows just 14 percent of men of the same age range reporting no sex.

Young women in the same age range, however, report higher rates of sexual activity, with only 18 percent saying they had no sex in the past year.

We may live amidst what seems a libidinous culture, but oddly also an increasingly sexless time.

Of course, the drop in early teen sex – and even more so, teen pregnancies – represents positive developments, but when lack of social interaction leads to celibacy in the twenties, thirties and beyond, the implications are less than wholesome.

The Atlantic recently described a “sex recession” in the United States and most western countries, with fewer people dating and even those in relationships getting intimate less often than in the past, while fewer enjoy regular bonds of any kind.

I recognize there are flaws with Christian “Purity Culture,” but the response to those flaws (usually by liberal Christians) is just as bad.

The liberal Christians, or others who are opposed to Christian sexual purity teachings, want to reject about any and all sexual boundaries, in the process of rebelling against Christian purity teaching.

However, not all of Christian purity teaching is bad – something the anti-Purity Culture advocates don’t want to admit or discuss.

As I’ve pointed out in older posts, the anti-Purity Culture movement ends up alienating and marginalizing any adults who do choose to remain celibate or virgins until marriage.

We’re living in an age and culture where a lot of us are demanded to respect any and all sexual behaviors, except for virginity and celibacy; those are mocked, as are those who practice them. The tolerance goes only one-way with many Anti-Purity Culture adherents.

We can’t defeat shame by whittling down God’s law to fit our behavior. We need the good news of God’s forgiveness instead

….Doing Away with Absolution

Unfortunately, the pastor who talked up the liberation that comes from admitting you’re in the wrong now seems more interested in helping people understand why they don’t need to.

In her new book, Shameless: A Sexual Reformation, Bolz-Weber is out to set Christians free from the angst and humiliation churches have often foisted on them because of their sexual proclivities and behaviors.

But the way the book goes about doing so is by rejecting wholesale the idea of “sexual purity” and, with it, the need to confess sexual transgression.

Pro tip: Don’t take advice from people who brag about their ‘smoking hot wives.’

Excerpts:

… Through [Christian-based] abstinence talks and dating talks and relationship talks, my understanding of marriage has become strewn with oft-repeated lines like “I don’t deserve my smoking hot wife” and “sex is awesome and feels great but you need to wait. I did.”

Well-meaning as they were, speakers used these lines to preach the Gospel, but the main thing I took away was a shallow understanding of sex and marriage. I found myself believing in two lies: “marriage and sex are completely different” and “sex is about me.”

Marriage and Sex Are Completely Different

Most talks and sermons on physical intimacy and marriage are compartmentalized. It is about sex… and then marriage, or it is about marriage… and then sex.

The share of Americans who say sex between unmarried adults is “not wrong at all” is at an all-time high. New cases of HIV are at an all-time low. Most women can—at last—get birth control for free, and the morning-after pill without a prescription.

If hookups are your thing, Grindr and Tinder offer the prospect of casual sex within the hour. The phrase If something exists, there is porn of it used to be a clever internet meme; now it’s a truism.

There were times when Tina Turner went without sex for a year at time, partly because she was terrified of how her partners might react to her wigs in bed.

“I was never one of those women who had to have sex no matter what,” Turner, 78, wrote in her upcoming memoir “My Love Story,” (Link): excerpted by People. “There have been times when I’ve gone up to a year without it, to be honest.”

by B. Wong
“You can go without sex. That’s much less of a problem than going through life alone, and without affection.”

It’s Not You, It’s Me is a series that looks at dating in America from the perspective of different ethnicities, sexual identities, life experiences and circumstances.

Forget butt play or the pull-out method: The latest trend in sex might be forgoing it altogether.

According to a recent study out of University College London, millennials are waiting longer to have sex than members of previous generations, with 12.5 percent of them abstaining until age 26.

But some wait even longer than that. We recently talked to three people who have remained virgins well into their 30s — one by choice, the other two by happenstance. Below, they tell us more about how they’ve remained abstinent this long and what it’s like to date when you’ve never had sex.

Responses have been edited for clarity and style, with last names withheld for privacy.

People remain virgins for so many different reasons. For you, was it an intentional choice to abstain from sex?

Brianna, a 35-year-old programmer from Indianapolis, Indiana:

My reasons are a bit of a mixed bag.

I was raised very conservatively and was told that sex before marriage was a sin, so that kept me a virgin for a while. Then, when I outgrew that thinking, it was a matter of waiting to find someone I felt comfortable enough with to consider that next step.

It just hasn’t happened. I date and have had a couple of relationships get as far as three months or so, but no one long term. So, I’m still a virgin.

Matt, a tech industry worker in his mid-30s who lives in Lansing, Michigan:

I grew up with fairly severe social anxiety, which I’ve never completely overcome. I had some early rejections in late high school and early college that completely ruined what self-esteem I had.

A new study of Pacific beetle cockroaches in the journal Ethology revealed some surprising feminist tendencies among the insects: In mixed-sex groups, females cluster together to stave off unwanted mating advances from males.

Some 18% of respondents under the age of 30 have had sex fewer than 10 times in the past year, a survey of 2,000 people on websites Mumsnet and Gransnet has found. Among all ages, the figure was 29%. We meet three couples who, while madly in love, fall into this category.

“Our lack of sex life at the moment is down to me,” Amanda, 35, tells the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire programme.

“I’m so tired all the time because my job is full on and it’s full on at home. It’s like my libido is tired.”

Journey to Purity creates a community for minority women abstaining from sex

Shunning premarital sex may seem old-fashioned to some, but Erica Willams says nowadays celibacy is somewhat of a movement, especially among some minority women.

Williams, 30, is the founder of Journey to Purity, a nonprofit in Virginia that aims to promote celibacy in women through education and community building efforts.

The Journey to Purity Meetup group has 102 members, and is limited to women. Williams says the majority of the women are black or Latina.
For these women, celibacy is a conscience and often faith-driven choice.

The guy who wrote it is kind of doing a take on some book or article he read about how Christians should approach sexuality, which is all well and good, but the article basically concludes by saying the solution for the chaste is to view Christianity as a “banquet.”

I know you’re randy and want to have actual sex with an actual person, but just think about how great Jesus is and that will take care of it, seems to be the conclusion.

I’ve seen this approach before to this issue by other Christians, but it does not satisfy me. It spiritualizes away a primal, very real and physical desire.

Telling me to imagine pretty sun sets if I have a craving for a piece of lasagna is not going to help me want the lasagna less.

…At the core of this interplay between sexuality and spirituality is desire and longing.

What we do with our sexual desires and longings says a lot about what we believe about God. Which is why we need to clearly define terms.

…Defining spirituality and sexuality can seem like a daunting task because there’s lots of confusion with these words, so in offering a simple way forward, I have found Deb Hirsch’s definitions (found in her book, Redeeming Sex) instructive.

I was reserving sexual activity for marriage. I’ve never had sexual intercourse. I was expecting to be married but never found Mr. Right.

I do have a libido.

Contrary to what Christians ASSUME about older virgins, Celibacy, being sexually abstinent for as long as I’ve been, is not “a gift” where God granted it to me and supernaturally removed my libido and makes it easy-breezy to cope with.

For many years, I was dedicated to remaining a virgin until marriage, due to Christian ethics, (these days I’m semi-agnostic), but also due to other reasons as well, which I shall not get into here but have explained in older posts on the blog.

In the last ten or so years, I’ve seen a disturbing trend where secular, liberal feminist views about sex have trickled into liberal Christian corners, where there is much railing against “slut shaming” and there is strong opposition to judging any woman for her sexual behavior or choices.

This trend became so common that these same views, disturbingly, began appearing on liberal Christian blogs and sites, whose progressive, feminist, Christian authors began writing editorials saying virginity is of no import, God only cares about your heart and spiritual purity, and God does not care so much anyone’s sexual behavior, (Link): intact hymen, or sexual past.

This anti- sexual purity thinking (which includes the down-playing, condemning, or mocking of physical virginity and adult celibacy) has even crept into mainstream moderate- to- conservative churches and Christian writing and thinking, unfortunately.

A YouTube blogger has posted a video to her thousands of followers explaining why she will not have sex until her wedding night – and wants to encourage other women who are contemplating doing the same.

Courtney Raine, a 21-year-old model and blogger, discussed the topic of abstinence on YouTube in her video titled: “UNSPOKEN Truth About Waiting Until Marriage,” which has been viewed more than 92,000 times.

ME ON TWITTER. (@sololoner2) I AM NOT NECESSARILY IN AGREEMENT WITH THE VIEWS OF ALL ARTICLES I TWEET OR RETWEET. SOMETIMES I ONLY AGREE PARTIALLY WITH SOME OF THE CONTENT I TWEET. ON OCCASION, I TWEET OR RETWEET VIEWS I TOTALLY DISAGREE WITH